Rise to power

Two military families arose from the Turkic slave-guards of the Samanids — the Simjurids and Ghaznavids – who ultimately proved disastrous to the Samanids. The Simjurids received an appanage in the Kohistan region of eastern Khorasan (northern Afghanistan). Samanid generals Alp Tigin and Abu al-Hasan Simjuri competed for the governorship of Khorasan and control of the Samanid empire by placing on the throne emirs they could dominate after the death of 'Abd al-Malik I.

When 'Abd al-Malik died in 961, it created a succession crisis between his brothers. A court party instigated by men of the scribal class — civilian ministers rather than Turkic generals — rejected the candidacy of Alp Tigin for the Samanid throne. Mansur I was installed instead, and Alp Tigin prudently retired to south of the Hindu Kush, where he founded the Ghaznavid dynasty at Ghazna (modern Ghazni Province) in 962. The Simjurids enjoyed control of Khorasan south of the Oxus River (Amu Darya) but were hard-pressed by a third great Iranian dynasty, the Buwayhids, and were unable to survive the collapse of the Samanids and the rise of the Ghaznavids.

The struggles of the Turkic slave generals for mastery of the throne with the help of shifting allegiance from the court's ministerial leaders both demonstrated and accelerated the Samanid decline. Samanid weakness attracted into Transoxania the Qarluq Turks, who had recently converted to Islam. They occupied Bukhara in 992, establishing in Transoxania the Qarakhanid, or Ilek Khanid, dynasty. After Alp Tigin's death in 993, Ishaq ibn Alptigin followed by Sebuktigin took to the throne. Sabuktigin's son Mahmud made an agreement with the Qarakhanids whereby the Oxus River was recognised as their mutual boundary.

Domination

Sebuktigin

Sebuktigin, the son-in-law of Alp Tigin, began expanding the new kingdom by capturing Samanid and Shahi territories, including most of what is now Afghanistan and part of Pakistan. The 16th century Persian historian, Ferishta, records Sebuktigin's genealogy as descended from the Sassanid emperors: "Subooktu-geen, the son of Jookan, the son of Kuzil-Hukum, the son of Kuzil-Arslan, the son of Ferooz, the son of Yezdijird, king of Persia." However, modern historians believe this was an attempt to connect himself with the history of old Persia.[25] After the death of Sebuktigin, his son Ismail claimed the throne for a temporary period but was defeated and captured by Mahmud at the Battle of Ghazni in 998.

Mahmud son Sebuktigin

In 997, Mahmud, another son of Sebuktigin, succeeded the throne,[26] and Ghazni and the Ghaznavid dynasty have become perpetually associated with him. He completed the conquest of the Samanid and Shahi territories, including the Ismaili Kingdom of Multan, Sindh, as well as some Buwayhid territory. By all accounts, the rule of Mahmud was the golden age and height of the Ghaznavid Empire. Mahmud carried out seventeen expeditions through northern India to establish his control and set up tributary states, and his raids also resulted in the looting of a great deal of plunder. He established his authority from the borders of Ray to Samarkand, from the Caspian Sea to the Yamuna.

During Mahmud's reign (997–1030), the Ghaznavids settled 4,000 Turkmen families near Farana in Khorasan. By 1027, due to the Turkmen raiding neighbouring settlements, the governor of Tus, Abu l'Alarith Arslan Jadhib, led military strikes against them. The Turkmen were defeated and scattered to neighbouring lands.[27] Although, as late as 1033, Ghaznavid governor Tash Farrash executed fifty Turkmen chiefs for raids into Khorasan.[28] The wealth brought back from the Indian expeditions to Ghazni was enormous, and contemporary historians (e.g. Abolfazl Beyhaghi, Ferdowsi) give glowing descriptions of the magnificence of the capital and of the conqueror's munificent support of literature. Mahmud died in 1030.

Decline

Twin sons of Mahmud

Mahmud left the empire to his son Mohammed, who was mild, affectionate, and soft. His brother, Mas'ud, asked for three provinces that he had won by his sword, but his brother did not consent. Mas'ud had to fight his brother, and he became king, blinding and imprisoning Mohammed as punishment. Mas'ud was unable to preserve the empire and following a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Dandanaqan in 1040, he lost all the Ghaznavid lands in Iran and Central Asia to the Seljuks, plunging the realm into a "time of troubles".[11][29] His last act was to collect all his treasures from his forts in hope of assembling an army and ruling from India, but his own forces plundered the wealth and he proclaimed his blind brother as king again. The two brothers now exchanged positions: Mohammed was elevated from prison to the throne, and Mas'ud was consigned to a dungeon, where he was assassinated in 1040 after a reign of ten years. Mas'ud's son, Madood, was governor of Balkh, and in 1040, after hearing of his father's death, came to Ghazni to claim his kingdom. He fought with the sons of the blind Mohammed and was victorious. However, the empire soon disintegrated and most kings did not submit to Madood. In a span of nine years, four more kings claimed the throne of Ghazni.

Ibrahim

In 1058, Mas'ud's son Ibrahim, a great calligrapher who wrote Koran with his own pen, became king. Ibrahim re-established a truncated empire on a firmer basis by arriving at a peace agreement with the Seljuks and a restoration of cultural and political linkages.[29] Under Ibrahim and his successors the empire enjoyed a period of sustained tranquility. Shorn of its western land, it was increasingly sustained by riches accrued from raids across Northern India, where it faced stiff resistance from Indian rulers such as the Paramara of Malwa and the Gahadvala of Kannauj.[29] He ruled until 1098.

Masud

Masud III became king for sixteen years, with no major event in his lifetime. Signs of weakness in the state became apparent when he died in 1115, with internal strife between his sons ending with the ascension of Sultan Bahram Shah as a Seljuk vassal.[29] Bahram shah defeated his brother Arslan for the throne at the Battle of Ghazni in 1117.

Sultan Bahram Shah

Sultan Bahram Shah was the last Ghaznavid King ruling Ghazni, the first and main Ghaznavid capital, he ruled thirty five years. In 1148 he was defeated by Saif-ud-din of Ghor but he recaptured Ghazni the next year. Ala'uddin Hussain, a Ghorid King, conquered the city of Ghazni in 1151, for the revenge of his brother Kutubbuddin's death, who was son-in-law of the king but was publicly punished and killed for a minor offence. Allauddin Ghor then razed all the city, and burned it for 7 days, after which he got famous as "Jahānsoz" (World Burner). Ghazni was restored to the Ghaznavids by the intervention of the Seljuks who came to Bahrams aid.[29] Ghaznavid struggles with the Ghurids continued in the subsequent years as they nibbled away at Ghaznavid territory and Ghazni and Zabulistan was lost a group of Oghuz Turks before captured by the Gurids.[29] Ghaznavid power in north western India continued until the conquest of Lahore from Khusrau Malik in 1186.[29]

Military and tactics

The core of the Ghaznavid army was primarily made up of Turks,[30] as well as thousands of native Afghans who were trained and assembled from the area south of the Hindu Kush in what is now Afghanistan.[31][32] During the rule of Sultan Mahmud, a new larger military training center was established in Bost (now Lashkar Gah). This area was known for blacksmiths where war weapons were made. After capturing and conquering the Punjab region, the Ghaznavids began to employ Hindu Indians in its army.

Like the other dynasties that rose out of the remains of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Ghaznavid administrative traditions and military practice came from the Abbasids. There were, however, unique changes adopted that met the demands of the geographic situation of the Ghaznavid dynasty. Due to their access to the Indus-Ganges plains the Ghaznavids, during the 11th and 12th centuries, developed the first Muslim army to use war elephants in battle. The elephants were protected by armour plating on their fronts. The use of these elephants in other regions that the Ghaznavids fought in, particularly in Central Asia, to which the elephant was a foreign weapon.[33]

State and culture

"The Ghaznavid sultans were ethnically Turkish, but the sources, all in Arabic or Persian, do not allow us to estimate the persistence of Turkish practices and ways of thought amongst them. Yet given the fact that the essential basis of the Ghaznavids’ military support always remained their Turkish soldiery, there must always have been a need to stay attuned to their troops’ needs and aspirations; also, there are indications of the persistence of some Turkish literary culture under the early Ghaznavids (Köprülüzade, pp. 56–57). The sources do make it clear, however, that the sultans’ exercise of political power and the administrative apparatus which gave it shape came very speedily to be within the Perso-Islamic tradition of statecraft and monarchical rule, with the ruler as a distant figure, buttressed by divine favor, ruling over a mass of traders, artisans, peasants, etc., whose prime duty was obedience in all respects but above all in the payment of taxes. The fact that the personnel of the bureaucracy which directed the day-to-day running of the state, and which raised the revenue to support the sultans’ life-style and to finance the professional army, were Persians who carried on the administrative traditions of the Samanids, only strengthened this conception of secular power.

"Persianisation of the state apparatus was accompanied by the Persianisation of high culture at the Ghaznavid court... The level of literary creativity was just as high under Ebrāhīm and his successors up to Bahrāmšāh, with such poets as Abu’l-Faraj Rūnī, Sanāʾī, ʿOṯmān Moḵtārī, Masʿūd-e Saʿd-e Salmān, and Sayyed Ḥasan Ḡaznavī (Rypka, Hist. Iran. Lit., pp. 196–97; Bosworth, Later Ghaznavids, pp. 75–77, 107–10). We know from the biographical dictionaries of poets (taḏkera-ye šoʿarā) that the court in Lahore of Ḵosrow Malek had an array of fine poets, none of whose dīvāns has unfortunately survived, and the translator into elegant Persian prose of Ebn Moqaffaʿ’s Kalīla wa Demna, namely Abu’l-Maʿālī Naṣr-Allāh b. Moḥammad, served the sultan for a while as his chief secretary (Bosworth, Later Ghaznavids, pp. 127–28). The Ghaznavids thus present the phenomenon of a dynasty of Turkish slave origin which became culturally Persianisedto a perceptibly higher degree than other contemporary dynasties of Turkish origin such as Saljuqs and Qarakhanids."[34]

Persian literary culture enjoyed a renaissance under the Ghaznavids during the 11th century.[35][36][37] The Ghaznavid court was so renowned for its support of Persian literature that the poet Farrukhi traveled from his home province to work for them.[38] The poet Unsuri's short collection of poetry was dedicated to Sultan Mahmud and his brothers Nasr and Yaqub.[39] Another poet of the Ghaznavid court, Manuchehri, wrote numerous poems to the merits and advantages of drinking wine.[40]

Sultan Mahmud, modelling the Samanid Bukhara as a cultural center, made Ghazni into a center of learning, inviting Ferdowsi and al-Biruni. He even attempted to persuade Avicenna, but was refused.[41] Mahmud preferred that his fame and glory be publicized in Persian and hundreds of poets assembled at his court.[42] He brought whole libraries from Rayy and Isfahan to Ghazni and even demanded that the Khwarizmshah court send its men of learning to Ghazni.[43] Due to his invasion of Rayy and Isfahan, Persian literary production was inaugurated in Azerbaijan and Iraq.[44]

The Ghaznavids continued to develop historical writing in Persian that had been initiated by their predecessors, the Samanids.[45] The historian Abul-Fazl Bayhaqi's Tarikh-e Beyhaqi, written in the latter half of the 11th century, is an example.[46]

Although the Ghaznavids were of Turkic origin and their military leaders were generally of the same stock, as a result of the original involvement of Sebuktigin and Mahmud in Samanid affairs and in the Samanid cultural environment, the dynasty became thoroughly Persianized, so that in practice one cannot consider their rule over Iran one of foreign domination. They also copied their administrative system from the Samanids.[47] In terms of cultural championship and the support of Persian poets, they were far more Persian than the ethnically Iranian Buyids rivals, whose support of Arabic letters in preference to Persian is well known.[48]

Historian Bosworth explains: "In fact with the adoption of Persian administrative and cultural ways the Ghaznavids threw off their original Turkish steppe background and became largely integrated with the Perso-Islamic tradition."[49] As a result, Ghazni developed into a great centre of Arabic learning.[50]

With Sultan Mahmud's invasions of northern India, Persian culture was established at Lahore, which later produced the famous poet, Masud Sa'd Salman.[51] Lahore, under the Ghaznavid rule in the 11th century, attracted Persian scholars from Khorasan, India and Central Asia and became a major Persian cultural centre.[52][53]

The Persian culture, established by the Ghaznavids in Ghazna and Eastern Afghanistan, survived the Ghurid invasion in the 12th century and endured until the invasion of the Mongols.[54]

Legacy

The Ghaznavid empire grew to cover much of present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest India. The Ghaznavid rulers are generally credited with spreading Islam into the Indian subcontinent. In addition to the wealth accumulated through raiding Indian cities, and exacting tribute from Indian rajas, the Ghaznavids also benefited from their position as an intermediary along the trade routes between China and the Mediterranean. They were, however, unable to hold power for long and by 1040 the Seljuks had taken over their Persian domains and a century later the Ghurids took over their remaining sub-continental lands.

The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians. The Muhammadan Periodpublished by London Trubner Company 1867–1877. (Online Copy: – Online version posted by: The Packard Humanities Institute; Persian Texts in translation)

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